Spotlight on Saja Al-Dujaili

October 25, 2018

Get to know Saja Al-Dujaili, part of our Scientific Affairs team!

Question: When did you join the Baylis team?
Answer: I joined Baylis in July 2017. I was hired as a Scientific Affairs Associate and was recently promoted to my current role, Senior Scientific Affairs Associate.

Q: Where did you work and what was your role prior to joining Baylis?
A: Baylis is my first job outside of an academic institution.

Q: Where did you go to school?
A: I graduated from the University of Toronto with a BASc in chemical engineering and a PhD in biomedical engineering. I also completed a post-doc at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where I worked with a team to invent a medical device.

My parents always encouraged me to pursue a high level of education and advance my career. I became more interested in medical technologies and research throughout my education, and always wanted to improve the quality of healthcare and impact patient lives.

Q: What is your day-to-day role at Baylis?
A: My role focuses on developing scientific evidence to support Baylis products. This could range from in-house benchtop testing to clinical studies, and white papers to journal publications. It requires doing a lot of research and working with different teams across Baylis to ensure the needs of all stakeholders, such as R&D and marketing, are aligned. It involves a lot of scheduled meetings and catching people in the hallways, which I don’t mind because I enjoy working in the collaborative environment at Baylis. When I’m not in a meeting, I’m keeping up to speed with the latest studies or working on projects with physicians.

Q: What is your fondest Baylis memory?
A: I enjoyed being involved in my first product launch at Baylis. It felt great being a part of a big team, so the Better Together theme of our 2018 Annual General Meeting really resonated with me—we are much stronger and more successful when we work together to achieve our goals. You also realize that the work you do has a direct impact on patients—that you’re involved in making something that will eventually be used in a procedure and impact a physician’s ability to treat their patients.

Needless to say, I’m excited to know we have more devices coming down the pipeline, and look forward to working on more product launches.

Q: What is it about Baylis and its mandate that motivates you to come to work every day?
A: Apart from the realization that we’re helping patients, I truly relish knowing that Baylis is a Canadian success story and that it was started by a remarkable woman, Gloria Baylis. There is a vision of continuous growth at Baylis, and knowing that you’re part of that growth and its real-world impact is very rewarding.
Q: What do you do in your spare time?
A: I am a self-professed gym junkie. I go to the gym nearly every day after work. It had gotten to the point where I injured my back because I was going too aggressively. That’s when I learned that a lot of everything in life is listening to your own personal cues and pacing yourself.

Apart from the gym, I like to travel and explore different neighbourhoods. When I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I would visit Detroit every weekend to go urban exploring. In my explorations, I’ve discovered a lot of cool graffiti and street art on walls of abandoned buildings. They are an expression of people’s journeys and stories.

Speed round

Favourite Colour? Green.

Favourite Snack? Peanuts—but if coffee were a snack, it would be coffee.

If you could, in which store would you max out you credit card? Winners.

What’s the last show you binge-watched? House of Cards.

What is/would be your go-to karaoke song? If I had to pick just one it would be Wannabe by Spice Girls.

If you could go back in time to witness one event in the past, what would it be? The Big Bang.

What do you like on your pizza? Veggies to balance out the carbs.

Favourite place in the world? It would be any hipster coffee house with a bunch of friends. A lot of the time, it’s not the place, it’s the people you’re with.

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